Canto Alla Vita
by greyrondo
Summary: ..."You could never understand-- you would not want to." But the sunrise after the Iifa Tree incident, Zidane finds himself relating to Kuja more than he thought he ever could.


Canto Alla Vita is a completely different take on Kuja than I wrote in Waxing Moon, and takes place the day after Zidane rescues Kuja from the Iifa Tree. This was written fairly quickly, but still please review and let me know what you think!

Disclaimer: I don't own FFIX, or Kuja. Which breaks my heart.

Canto All Vita

The mellow surge of tuning strings, muffled as if the players were already assembled beneath the boards, their parts prepared.

But the tuning gained a steady, shifting rhythm, the interwoven pitches equalizing into a shuffling white sort of noise. Zidane was only wishing for home. The stage was merely a dream: and the play he opened his bleary eyes to, more desperate and tragic than any script he had ever known.

He stared up through the stark slabs of stone that remained from their shelter's grander days; it was only a broken building crumbled on the seaside edge of Madain Sari and the Iifa tree.

But the morning sunlight sparkled like the tinkling arpeggio of piano as it danced on the sea. It was only his voice that did not know its part.

The aches crying out from his bones made it difficult to at first concentrate on his surroundings enough to understand where he was, and another breathless and meandering moment to comprehend why.

"Kuja," he breathed. And his gaze darted around with a start. Nowhere, nowhere could he find that telltale silken silhouette of mercury.

Staggering to his feet, he anxiously scattered across the stone, a powdery rosy dust clinging to the rock as the red dirt from the cliffs mingled with the paler sands of the beaches.

He wandered the ruins until the ancient steps traced him to a smooth ledge overlooking the strand. It could have been a balcony, once. Now it was only a flat space utterly open to the weathering influence of the sea.

A slender silhouette, revived by the morning, stared out to the waves. He was on his knees; he was crying, and laughing through the tears even as they darkened the stone like rain.

"Kuja?" Zidane's coarse voice disrupted that mirthful wind-chime's solitude.

Kuja's opalescent hair shimmered in periwinkle and lavender as the wind's sigh played with his long and loose waves. Supple he was as he gathered himself to his feet, light as a dancer as he turned and the sun caught his unearthly pale skin.

"Brother, brother," he laughed even as his tears continued to fall. His musical voice sounded with relief and gratitude even as he smiled that knowing grin that lit up his indigo irises.

He had clothed himself in white; where he had even found the garments, Zidane could not even begin to guess; perhaps it was only magic's glamour and his blood-soaked rags still remained beneath. But who was Zidane to doubt Kuja's resourcefulness?

He stared at the immaculate figure, and the previous night resounded in Zidane's memory. Kuja, crying with rage and screaming at him, demanding to be left behind, furiously insisting that he be left to die.

_"After what you pulled when you heard you were gonna die, you really think I'm gonna listen to you when you say you want to die now?" Zidane had shouted as his patient reserves snapped. _

_He almost wished that Kuja was well enough to walk, so that he'd perhaps go kill himself after all, if he wanted to so much, just so he wouldn't have to listen to him for another instant._

_"You don't get it at all!" Kuja retorted, his elegant façade fallen away. He gripped the wound at his side where Zidane had used his own shirt to slake the free-flowing blood. "How could you understand?! I'd rather die now than…"_

_"Than what?" Zidane wanted to know._

_"It's all I have left!! The most I can do is choose when to die, and I want it now! You think I'll wait for his curse to take its time tearing me apart?!"_

_"Kuja, I'm not gonna let you make a decision that you're gonna regret a couple of hours from now when you're calmed down and healed and…"_

_"And who's going to heal me, Zidane?? The Black Mages in their village? What a quaint little thought," he retorted._

_"Well, maybe if you didn't make them so short-lived, then they wouldn't hate you so much!!"_

_"You really believe that I made them mortal simply out of spite?!"_

_"Well, yeah. Yes, that would be rather like you, Kuja," Zidane had remarked dryly even as he abandoned their confrontation to start a fire with the few scraps of kindle that lay scattered along the ruins' foundations. He suspected that they were the remains of Queen Brahne's fleet, washed ashore in determination to return to port one final time._

_"You're in no place to judge me," Kuja told him._

_He had felt Kuja's withering gaze even as he turned to face it. "What am I supposed to do now, Zidane," he said quietly. "Where am I supposed to go? You were so bent on rescuing me, now what are you going to do with me? No one ever wanted me around, not Garland, not anyone. I can't even go to my home, because of a certain someone."_

_"Well, excuse me for giving you the option to figure that out for yourself, Kuja," Zidane had remarked. He regretted his biting tone as soon as the words had flown from his mouth, but he said nothing to amend his statement._

_And then later, the stars higher in the sky, as Kuja had passed out from furious exhaustion. Curled up like a question on the hard ground near the fire, his tail had linked around his thin waist. Too pale, too perfect. Even in sleep, he somehow refused to appear as delicate as his features should betray. Even then, he was rebelliously strong._

"Do you smell it?" Kuja's surprisingly deep voice uttered as it sweetly beckoned Zidane into the present. "Breathe it in, Zidane, the scent of the sea. The infusion of the earth, stark and raw and intoxicating as the most seductive of perfumes."

His sleeve billowed playfully as he tucked back a strand of hair. "Do you know this was the first sight I took in when I came to this planet? Can you pretend to know the ecstasy that surged through me when I felt the sunshine, after a lifetime of Terra's cold nurturing?"

"I felt alive, Zidane. Truly alive for the first time, and free! You have lived with freedom your entire life, how could you fathom my bliss when I realized that an entire sky separated me from…"

And in the middle of his thought, he interrupted his own words. "I'm alive, Zidane. Alive…" he said as his warm voice overflowed with joyful laughter.

And then, as instantly as his euphoria had overtaken him, he was somehow subdued. "Why am I wasting my words on you?" he said softly. "You could never understand. You would never want to…" Kuja's voice faded away, and with it, the dancing wind that had picked up around Zidane's ankles.

Kuja's fingers fanned out, cupping a magical spark of blue electricity.

Zidane's eyes widened. What had he done, rescuing Kuja? His brother's mercurial personality made him more than capable of suddenly attacking Zidane without provocation. He could laugh and thank him one moment, and try to kill him the next.

But Zidane had judged too soon. Kuja stared into the flickering power meditatively, speaking slowly as he did. "You should go back to your princess. My pardon—queen, now."

"Don't be ridiculous," Zidane sighed, hoping his relief wasn't terribly obvious. "You're hardly healed just because you can walk and cast magic. And like you said last night, it wouldn't be responsible of me to help you and then abandon you."

At that, Kuja smiled a little. A shy smile that could bring anyone to their knees. "Do you hear this, Garland," he said to the air. "Even your attempt to make me useless to you has only served to aid me in the end. And that's why you're gone, and I still remain."

He laughed, and curled his fingers into a loose fist and dispersing the raw energy into the wind. "I will later dance for your death in the tradition of the Summoners you were so determined to destroy the night you lost your puppet. Both of them," he amended graciously.

And he then turned to Zidane. "That is why you rescued me, is it not? You said it was because… because you could have just as easily have been in my position. And you said that you would have done the exact same thing…"

"And for getting me off Terra," Zidane added. "Even though it was because you hated me, I can't forget now that it was you who saved me, after all. Thanks," he said to his brother.

"I have you to thank," Kuja returned. "For this chance. Because you can rest assured that I will use it."

"What?" Zidane said aloud. He could not help it.

This time, Kuja's laugh was condescending. "Zidane, did you believe that I intend to let myself die? Perhaps, had you been born in my position, you would have learned that there is always a way to defy fate. My purpose, for example…"

He conjured a breath of fire and scattered it to the winds. Zidane watched the dying magical embers catch and fly up into the air.

"As an Angel of Death. Even in this new, peaceful world, there will be use for me. This world—my adopted home—will have need of me. Isn't it simply perfect, Zidane?"

A reply could not come more quickly to Zidane's lips. "What… what purpose are you talking about?!" he stammered.

Kuja sensed his fear, and drew close to him in what he believed was reassurance. His hands curved gently around Zidane's face, and Kuja smiled that angelic expression of his that could only hint at the tortured turmoil that lied beneath.

"Because life is never still, never content to lie quiet and allow fate to control its path. Zidane," he continued, "did you learn anything from me? Has your big brother taught you nothing?"

"Oh, Zidane… you could never understand what I feel, standing here at this moment. Garland gone, Terra gone: it matters not that I never got a chance to rule it. It was freedom that I wanted, and freedom that I can feel in my very soul. My soul!!" Kuja exclaimed.

His hands left Zidane's face as he turned to take in the breathless sea once more. His gentle sigh was so heavy with emotion that the wind barely managed to bear it aloft.

"No matter what now, I still have my soul. My life, my identity, my being. Now, no one can take it from me…"

Zidane regarded Kuja's still figure, the form that was still so strange and so reminiscent of his overhanging past that it still jarred his heart to look at him. But even as he did, there was something else inside. As tiny as the blossom of fire that Kuja had conjured, a slow understanding and empathy grew inside Zidane even as he looked on at his older brother.

Life. It had all been so that Kuja could claim for himself that which so many took for granted, or threw away with the plunge from a bridge or flick of a blade.

It did not make the countless deaths he had caused right, or even justifiable.

But Zidane could no longer look into those indigo eyes and feel only hatred: he now saw Kuja's very soul reflecting back at him.In that recognition perhaps the slightest shade of himself, the part that cherished life.


End file.
